I've sold on eBay for years using their old "Seller's Assistant Basic" which was originally "Blackthorne Auction Assistant." This was a simple, easy to use listing and post sale tool that worked almost flawlessly. I was very comfortable with it. It did everything I needed it to do with no hassles. eBay has now pulled the plug on Seller's Assistant, and replaced it with a bloated, complex monster called "eBay Blackthorne." I tried it a year ago, and found it to be cumbersome and unreliable. And from what I read in the discussion forums, it has only gotten worse in the past year.

The latest version of the eBay Blackthorne requires Microsoft .Net Framework in order to work. Somewhere in the leaky recesses of my mind I recall reading about problems with this .Net thing, but I don't remember where I read this, or exactly what the problems were.

I thought I had read something about on this board, but couldn't find anything in the archives.

Could some of you computer savvy guys shed some light on this?

This is definitely HSM related, as I need to continue my eBay selling activities to get the money to buy more toys....oops I mean tools.

SGW

06-28-2007, 11:19 AM

We've used .NET Framework for some software development at the place I work. I haven't heard of any problems...at least, no more so than with anything else from Uncle Bill.

ptjw7uk

06-28-2007, 11:44 AM

We use .net in school and have 2 versions loaded on all machines no (touch wood) problems YET!!!

Peter

Evan

06-28-2007, 12:56 PM

I use .net for software development. Nothing special to comment on other than it is the most bloated runtime environment ever seen. It has no apparent adverse impact on the machine operation.

BadDog

06-28-2007, 02:36 PM

.Net is more-or-less the MS answer to Java and provides the same sort of runtime + library with a focus on JIT compile and multi-language support (contrast to Java). The runtime environment itself is actually not that "bloated". The bloat comes from the extended BCL (Base Class Library) which is huge (over 25,000 classes as I recall) and provides support for just about anything a program needs to do without requiring additional 3rd party support. That's a mixed blessing for users since the initial install can take a long time, but almost all programs run without needing any additional support (Desktop Apps may use 3rd party UI widgets with separate install/download overhead). This is also great for developers in that there are classes available for most anything at hand.

Another downside is that there are now 4 separate versions of .Net that may be required. 1.0, 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0 (3.0 is really just 2.0 with some new tech) can sometimes be found on the same system. This is good for stability since you don't (necessarily) have runtime changes underneath an application (re. "DLL hell" of the past), but it does add to system bloat. Typical double edged sword issue.

Security wise, it's roughly the same as Java, though in this case, I believe the number of known security issues with Java is actually considerably higher than with .Net.